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Topic Starter Topic: Copyright & IP rights question
Wem
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PostPosted: 03-12-2005 01:09 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Hello everyone.

I was wondering if someone could provide some insight into the copyright and intellectual property rights regarding games like Quake 3.

I'm going to be starting on a mod for another game, and am going to directly rip off aspects of Quake 3. Now, people got away with pulling sounds from Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 into a server-side Counter-Strike mod. I can't imagine ID wanting to rigidly enforce their IP rights, and it's for a non-commercial project that people who like Quake 3 would probably appreciate.

I'm just wondering where the line is drawn. If I wanted to borrow some sounds from Quake 3, I'm sure that would be quite well under the legal radar.. but if I wanted to reproduce deathmatch maps from Q3, as well as specific player models, weapons, sounds, and retain the exact names, I wonder if there would be any reaction from ID Software.

What I want to do isn't what you would call plagiarism.. it's more like borrowing artwork from Quake 3.

It's something I'm going to go ahead with even if I get a negative reaction here, but I definitely would like it to be a homage to Quake 3 (one of my favourite games, still) instead of a rip off where I slightly alter everything to avoid copyright infrigement.

What do you guys think?
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Kat
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PostPosted: 03-12-2005 01:21 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Generally speaking if you're not modding the original game then anything you 'borrow' *is* copyright infringing and you're breaking the law (to put it simply). It explicitly says in the EULA that you can (to paraphrase) use the content 'of' the game only for content 'for' the game; anything else is a no-no.

So to borrow the content directly for anything *not* Quake3 is not permitted. The only 'legal' option you have is to physically recreate the assets *in the style of* rather than replicate them. This is pretty much what custom content creators do now; they create new assets to fit into the Quake3 universe, not copy it.
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dzjepp
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PostPosted: 03-12-2005 01:27 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Hmmmm, correct me if I'm wrong but when you say 'inspired by' can't you still say replicate a Q3 rocket launcher or rail gun in the exact same look in a different game, NOT ripping it mind you, but recreating one from scratch. This way you are not using media content from an id game directly, you are merely recreating something that looks similar.

Wouldn't the same go for making maps? You can't copyright brushes now can you? :p
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Kat
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PostPosted: 03-12-2005 03:26 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I suppose it boils down to a question of how 'cheap' a particular team wants their mod to be - 'cheap' in every sense of that word; 'cheap' as in 'quick', and 'cheap as in 'to lazy-assed to develop their own ideas'... if you 'copy' Quake 3 why not use Quake 3, you might as well otherwsie all you have is ... Quake3, but not by id..!

Also considering how much time can be spent creating a mod I would have thought people would want to spend that time doing something of more creative value, coming up with and making their own idea bear fruits which would intrinsically have more 'value' then simply rehashing old content.
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Guest
PostPosted: 03-12-2005 04:38 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Hello my friend

I think, pretty sure, that if you ask permission to raw to utilise his...
well, whatever you want from this site, he will let you do it but
may be with some restriction,
Ask him personaly.

Pete
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Frank Drebbin
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PostPosted: 03-13-2005 05:51 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


This is Wem.. I had to create a new account because I couldn't remember my password and the forums wouldn't send anything to my email address. I actually used to be a part of these forums a few years ago, and I found out the other day that that account is somehow still active, so I couldn't even use my own email address for that account.

Anyway. Thank you for the replies..

Quote:
I suppose it boils down to a question of how 'cheap' a particular team wants their mod to be - 'cheap' in every sense of that word; 'cheap' as in 'quick', and 'cheap as in 'to lazy-assed to develop their own ideas'... if you 'copy' Quake 3 why not use Quake 3, you might as well otherwsie all you have is ... Quake3, but not by id..!

Also considering how much time can be spent creating a mod I would have thought people would want to spend that time doing something of more creative value, coming up with and making their own idea bear fruits which would intrinsically have more 'value' then simply rehashing old content.


There's nothing cheap about my idea. There's nothing quick about it, either. We want to take sounds from Quake 3, to save us from having to do recording sessions with the voice talent and sound effects people we don't have. Everything else we have to create from scratch. It's not like you can grab a Q3 model file and put it into another game..

I also came up with the idea first, and then it occurred to me that Q3 did it quite well (Quake 3 doesn't have a monopoly on the type of thing I'm trying to do, UT did the same thing). For what I'm trying to do, there's no more creative value in doing my own take, than just copying what Q3 did so well.

It's the same content whether people recognize the sights and sounds as inspired by Quake 3 or not.
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Kat
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PostPosted: 03-13-2005 06:08 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


You should have been clearer in your initial post... if you ask along the lines of... "is it ok to rip off aspect of Quake3 ... to use in my mod" then the answer is simply "no". Your initial comments made it quite clear that you were thinking about reproducing content based on ID IP to "rip off" their ideas and you quite clearly stated you didn't care what people thought so don't get on your high horse.

If you had said... "I've got this idea and I'm thinking of basing some aspects of it on things found in Quake 3. UT et-al" Then that's a different question and would have got a different responce along the lines of "sure just so long as you don't do a direct like for like copy or so that someone looking at your work doesn't say 'hey that looks like [.....] from [....] game, they've ripped it off'".

If you're going to spend time doing new assets you might as well take the time to do new sounds as part of that process.

btw.. the sendmail for the forum isn't working which is why you couldn't get the password mailed to you. It's being fixed but may take some time.
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